Sunday, May 21, 2017

Everdeath by Design

From his earliest years Cincinnatus, by some strange and happy chance comprehending his danger, carefully managed to conceal a certain peculiarity. He was impervious to the rays of others, and therefore produced when off his guard a bizarre impression, as of a lone dark obstacle in this world of souls transparent to one another; he learned however to feign translucence, employing a complex system of optical illusions, as it were--but he had only to forget himself, to allow a momentary lapse in self control, in the manipulation of cunningly illuminated facets and angles at which he turned his soul, and immediately there was alarm. In the midst of the excitement of a game his coevals would suddenly forsake him, as if they had sensed that his lucid gaze and the azure of his temples were but a crafty deception and that actually Cincinnatus was opaque. Sometimes, in the midst of a sudden silence, the teacher, in chagrined perplexity, would gather up all the reserves of skin around his eyes, gaze at him for a long while, and finally say: "What is wrong with you, Cincinnatus?" Then Cincinnatus would take hold of himself and, clutching his own self to his breast, would remove that self to a safe place.

In the course of time the safe places became ever fewer: the solicitous sunshine of public concern penetrated everywhere, and the peephole in the door was placed in such a way that in the whole cell there was not a single point that the observer on the other side of the door could not pierce with his gaze. Therefore Cincinnatus did not crumple the motley newspapers, did not hurl them, as his double did (the double, the gangrel, that accompanies each of us--you, and me, and him over there--doing what we would like to do at that very moment, but cannot...)

He was not angry at the informers, but the latter multiplied and, as they matured, became frightening. Cincinnatus, who seemed pitch-black to them, as though he had been cut out of a cord-size block of night, opaque Cincinnatus would turn this way and that, trying to catch the rays, trying with desperate haste to stand in such a way as to seem translucent. Those around him understood each other at the first word, since they had no words that would end up in an unexpected way, perhaps in some archaic letter, an upsilamba...

-Vladimir Nabokov

Not a Metaconsciousness? Changes in Popular Culture

This one has discussed in some detail the effects of mass communication on human societies. In particular, the growing ability of utterly or relatively powerless individuals and entities to so thoroughly endorse the expressions of powerful individuals and entities that those endorsements can withstand not only short-term but long-term detriment to the endorsers, whose opinion was neither necessary nor desired. We've discussed, to one degree or another, the now-centurial and commonplace observations that popular culture has replaced increasing amounts of what we might call substance with what we might call insubstance, in which the story is replaced by improved detail in the feelie, and the rebellion by the angry scribble. To use a simple metaphor for this process, consider the replacement of a settlement's courtship dance by a settlement's three nightly taverns, of visiting your sick grandmother by e-mailing her, and of participating in sporting contests by paying to watch others do so. These trends in popular culture are sufficiently advanced that most have noticed, and been permitted to share observance of, them--ironically, shared observance reliant upon the ability to collectively further the purportedly obscene culture being commented upon, as when men claim to resurrect the patriarchy by mastering their club game. The backlashes in these cases are planned ahead of time, and depend for their success upon paying, in both the short and the long term, the very masters of the cultural change that are supposedly being critiqued. The rentier of the tavern seat, and the owner of the virtual salon, are delighted to sell tickets to those who use their newfound access to propagate the revolution.

More recently, we have discussed the ways in which this aspect of popular culture has advanced to a stage where redundant and unnecessary elements--the culture's own fuel--express and maintain self-damaging aspects of that culture without recompense. Over the past century, the culture of vicarious celebrity derived from mass attention to the gambolings of the Carolingian inbred has peaked, then burst, scattering a pollen of celebrity across Terra. Many individuals and entities have noted the visual aspects of this change, drawing similarities most drastically between the ways paid celebrities have marketed themselves in popular media, and the ways unpaid killers have portrayed themselves in the same venues. Fewer, but still many, individuals and entities have noted the ways in which non-killers have self-celebritized the mundane, rather than dramatic, courses of their own lives; first, sharing pictures of the entire family on holiday, then trailing toward the as-yet nadir of one's ungroomed morning selfie. The vicarious, then literal whoring of the non-celebrity was, thanks to biology, frequently enough noticed that few disagreements were raised when it was mentioned; the billable rate of sexual performers dropped dramatically as supply flooded the market, many of the erstwhile performers recording and sharing their own niche congress for the most modest of fees, via careers so temporally brief in their period of remuneration that, could one claim the adult performer was once appropriately compensated for her or his services, the argument is no longer rationally defensible.

American students may permanently indenture themselves in the amount of significant local currency for educations which do not produce careers. Such unemployed workers can at least allege that educations similar in form, if not substance, once led to lifetime careers, while those employed in various forms of the oldest known profession have no such excuse regarding unpaid work. Admittedly, arguments can be made that one might snare virtual tips, investor exposure, or the undying love of an adoring wealthy protector by transmitting to the globe one's home colon hydrotherapy and subsequent erotic employment of the relevant area, but the economic memoirs of the retired self-pornographers say otherwise--and in that career, unlike that of having a Master's degree in Basket Appreciation, the timeless prostitute's rule about being paid makes improbable the scammed university graduate's argument of historical expectations of future employment. Which is to say, someone who gets some degrees and is then angry that there was no job may claim tradition-based expectation as a defense for not being paid in the end, whereas exhibitionists who offer free samples may not.

Why the uncompensated whoring? It would be easy to blame economists alone, charging them with failing to account for a valueless product. Sadly, the economists can't be insulted here, for the same trend has occurred in less visceral social media. Sharing one's family's holiday picture may arguably accomplish a number of functions, both financial and non-: it may express an image of tradition, solidity, or cultural orientation, making job- and promotion-seeking, or other types of networking, more profitable. It may show off influential or monied relatives, influential or monied gifts, cooking skills, financial potency via visible decoration or architecture, or, for strictly social reasons, it may demonstrate how happy everyone is, and how well someone is succeeding at any related aspect of life. Many lofty fields of formal inquiry, economics included, can find rational justification for showing off one's expensive vacation, new purchase, successful relationship, or difficult job completed. Where this rationale fails is the proliferation of self-downplaying for those who have nothing to play down, which consists of almost all Americans/westerners.

Through the venues of replacement pop culture, people self-propagandize their bad sides, too, uncompensated. Acting as both their own paparazzi and their own publicists, individuals showcase their failures, their worsts, their unattractives, et cetera. This seemingly counter-intuitive behavior does not fit with celebritization as we think of it...or does it? Indeed, the available history of Europe after the fall, post-Nicean Europe, has shown the sick delight that Europeans have since taken in building up and tearing down images of their hollow leaders. Perhaps it was due to the void created by distant "general-kings," then "delegates-generals" kings, then "delegates the delegates who delegate generalship" kings, with whom Charlemagne and his immigrant viziers replaced the onsite-participant kings of pre-Christian Europe. Perhaps it was caused by the forced dissonance of hosting delegates from the "not as I do" liar's stoicism of the Gilded Indulgence Boyanus Yarmulke Palace in Rome; perhaps by something else. Royal/Hollywood events, still extant in the 21st century, draw primarily from the celebritization of a costumed hierarchy mandated upon Europe by the self-named universalist/globalist church, which has always provided salacious, semi-hidden scandal about who is or isn't allowed to touch whom.

In any case or combination of such cases, celebritization spread, at first theoretically warranted by wealth and influence, now adopted by the masses of the opposite. Celebrities, whether cardinal or actor, need by virtue of power and hedonism to demonstrate their everyday humility through false or exaggerated displays of normalcy. Politicians doff expensive suits in favor of untucked flannel shirts and working trousers in order to convey how ordinary they are, theoretically in order to trick the local peons into believing that feller from Washington is a roughneck, too. In such situations, the powerful entity's attempt at visual deception is rational, while the local peon's is unnecessary. The new self-celebritization has been characterized not by the ability, but by the willingness, to exploit the supposedly negative self in the same way as the supposedly positive self.

(Pity the Objectivist noble who discovers that the embarrassing cellulite-, sexual-, child-, or death-related scandal was not a dark blot upon a celebrated and rewarding career built upon that person's inherent, diligently cultivated, and incredible thespian skills at court or cinema, but that career's necessary foundations and intended fruits! Succeeding in acting and politicking have been at times considered shameful in occupied Europe, not because people possessed a measured or inherent dislike of someone attempting to entertain them on the stage or deal with the necessities of administering society, but because it became apparent to earlier subjects that actors and politicians were being chosen for other reasons, often their willingness/propensity to set harmful examples. Some lingering traces of this trend remain in our collective memory, particularly as regards politicians, or perhaps a general distrust of "Hollywood," but that instinct is in 2017 considerably reduced from centuries ago, and is still being downsized. Most people now accept "business is tough" and "you gotta compromise" as acceptable rationales for whatever outrage they may notice.)

This inter-centurially evolved trend of self-detrimental behavior might at first blush seem to be related to altruism, whether in the giving of one's body and soul to help free fappers or the giving of one's body and soul to help politicians achieve agendas. These acts, when harmful to the actress or actor, may be confused with altruism, except that this behavior seems to be systemically offered in an inverse relationship to need, creating the situation wherein people are far more likely to give to the uncaring, unnoticing powerful. Moreover, these acts occur in flagrant contradiction to the actress' or actor's own passionately self-enunciated ideology, wherein support for a politician who has exemplified everything in which that actor believes is impossible, while support for the personifications of the binary opposite of that drone's ideology is enthusiastically embraced. Tumblr whores are not altruists who expose themselves to the homeless or bedridden, but to people with the funds and privacy to quietly and solely enjoy reliable high-speed connections. Voters, too, vote for not the underdog candidate, nor the perfect candidate, but the "settle-for" candidate who feels, to them, "realistic." (Whispered commands from the Oversoul.)

Again, the most recent U.S. presidential examples serve well for illustration: a trust fund baby from Connecticut becomes the expression of rugged independent frontier cowboymanship; a silver-spoon prep school Columbia/Harvard white-gened and white-encultured decimillionaire becomes the pinnacle of poor urban black achievement; a wife-swapping loan-taking Talmudvision star who marches in Zionist parades and takes photo ops eating Mexican food and hugging black preachers is celebrated as the resurgence of the true European peoples. Without the false ideologies, none of them could adequately satisfy their appreciators nor their detractors, whereas if they did exemplify those false ideologies, they would be liked less by their friends and hated less by their enemies.

What an impossibility it seems. The costume department's work on Bush II, for example, made him just rugged enough to be presidential, whereas even the purportedly greatest fans of cowboy ruggedness, and purportedly greatest haters of Connecticut financial pedigrees, did not vote nor want to vote for any actual cowboys and/or rustlers. People who said or believed that they really wanted a crusade against Islam, that they really wanted to be led by a cowboy who shot from the hip, instead chose old Connecticut money. To criticize Bush II for being a phony, and demand real homesteaders or cattle rustlers instead, was a sin against the necessary illusion. Similarly, Democrats wanted to believe that Bush II was an inexperienced cowboy; they needed that, needed it so desperately; needed to believe he was a rampaging cattleman, rather than a financial scion of a New England family descended from British royalty and quite well able to maintain the Clinton legacy. The illusion gave everyone on "both" "sides" just what they needed to get through it all. Consider Obama's black/whiteness and Trump's national/globalistness in the same light as Bush II's cowboy/heir-ness: like chimp to human DNA, the people inside are 99+% the usual filler. But, without the veneer of excitement elicited by the role the actor is playing, no one can love them or hate them in the proper ways.

Counters to Metaconscious Growth

Arka has discussed the above, and many other ways that everyday fleshbags have begun to celebritize themselves. Perhaps this behavior is only vestigial elements of lost self felt collectively, representing the failed hopes of people who possess nothing but an illusion of fame. In a world where nobody sees character anymore, only the more translatable logos with which one associates oneself, maybe this is a sociological phenomenon alone; some by-product of evolution that causes people to mimic their surroundings in pursuit of a fabricated entity, even to the point of publicly demeaning themselves as a totemic attachment to idealized celebrity. If a dentist's wife with a new 4500-square-foot house in a pristinely manicured gated community, and a nanny for her children, posts a picture of her dirty kitchen ("Lol, I'm so messy! So overwhelmed! *sigh*"), it makes a sort of sense in a cruel, triumphant way, whereas for a broke single mother with a 500 square foot apartment, and no sleep in between three jobs, to make the same essential post on the same social network, raises the question why she would spend her microwave-waiting time doing so. The "messy kitchen" post is a form of communication, to be sure, but why, and of what, and how it can produce identical form through such different venues, are the questions answered by metaconsciousness. "Monkey see, monkey do" surely plays a part, but that principle does not stretch quite far enough to suffice for an explanation.

Perhaps Arka is incorrectly or exaggeratedly personifying these inexplicable mass happenings by calling them the development of new forms of life--metaconsciousnesses--rather than simply accepting on faith that these mass-coordinating, reproducing, synchronizing effects are the result of randomized individual reactions to cultural prompts. This potential critique would be similar to the critique that microscopic germs do not cause illness, for everyone knows that demons are the parties responsible. In this case, we do not need a microscope, but a megascope: the ability to perceive living entities on a larger, slower scale. The Oversoul's mass-humans are not delusional, but in fact, are highly evolved, well-functioning components; were they delusional, however, they would be minilomaniacal, rather than megalomaniacal, for their behavior is harmful to the self while seemingly benefiting no one. Kinship altruism, or forms of sacrificing the genetic self for the better perpetuation of genetically more-similar individuals, could attempt to explain some sacrifice, but in the instant 21st century case, mass-humans sacrifice to the detriment of themselves, their kin, and even their distant non-kin rulers. For some, it may take the form of risking apocalyptic war that would slay their co-ethnics, co-ideologues, and enemies alike; for others, it may involve scattering radioactive waste that will have a global effect (including on one's own direct lineal descendants ten generations removed), or attempting to preserve self-destructive cultures (other than one's own). The behaviors here discussed are too absurd--that is, inexplicable--by the rules of even large-group genetic benefit, to be explained by any individual or large-group desire for success. Instead, the minilomania demonstrated by mass-humans is most simply, completely, and necessarily explained by the use of mass-humans as the components of a larger-scale entity. It is, therefore, sensible, when a billion cells are amputated to save the whole, even by the rules of random mutation and natural selection. Neither evolution nor fool's evolution are violated when a fox chews off its own paw to escape a trap; so too with the willingness of mass-humans to displace their own thoughts, bodies, and offspring. When understood to be acting as component parts, rather than as singular deciders or genetic-perpetuaters, their willingness to destroy self, kin, species and/or planet in various ways is rational and explicable.

(Contra the universalist/catholic church's prohibitions against cleanliness and advocacy for demon- and sin-based epidemics, our biological challenge in this time is to see things not smaller, but larger than we now can or want to believe in, then gain an understanding of how they work. How can metaconsciousnesses be contacted? Certainly not through parliamentary debates, interviews with publishing chairmen or executive producers, or reading the official comments to Fed directives, can one expect to interact with the trans-thinking behemoths who make decisions that affect the world. Germs proved able to subvert human language, and to eliminate it, but not to respond to it; instead, it took well-timed chemicals or other germs. And the successful usage of, say, antibiotics, was not caused by marching or praying or negotiating around vials. Mass-humans have found a way to negotiate between mass-souls through illusory language delivered by proxy, which methods we might characterize as "reading between the lines" or "bullshit," or "political correctness," et cetera. Standalones can recognize and track the behaviors of a metaconsciousness, but not yet perform them well enough to consistently communicate. By contrast, people whom we might call "bankers" or "globalists"--even non-Semites--can use incoherent, broken pieces of recognizable human language in order to communicate coherent ideas to each other. Undisclosed and/or private meetings are certainly facilitating this effect, but given the presence of secretly-standalone retainers with a potential penchant for leaking, some greater, more evolved form of communication is occurring somewhere, wherein more complex ideas are being successfully communicated with a shared understanding that is beyond current standalone ability to perceive. This could explain the seemingly idiotic policy of globe-crossing in-person meetings in the 21st century in response to demands of instant political necessity: not only for privacy reasons, but because the nuances of dynamic, coordinated policy shifts cannot be effected without, as it were, neurons touching neurons. What might we later learn about the real way to translate closed-doors, yet still sanitized, political speech?)

A Negative Parasitism of the Mind

A discussion of a mass market consciousness, or metaconsciousness ("Oversoul" is an English translation of a derogatory term), should not be confused with an argument for a new "philosophy" of life. The somewhat nascent metaconsciousness found on Terra 2017 meets even biased local requirements for "life" (such as "requires water"), as well as more widespread ones ("can reproduce itself"). The effects of the metaconsciousness are felt both consciously and sub-, as in our common sense of various inevitablities that would not be inevitable were we wholly- or mostly-standalone, self-actualizing beings who dominated this planet. Our cyclical fascination with apocalypse narratives, which recurs on a more rapid scale with the infantile stretches of the metaconsciousness, is an example of this. So too our recurring obsession with "artificial intelligence," whose cycle accelerates with seeming exponentiality. This does not mean that all of us are part of the new evolution; it compares more closely to the hypothetical wading fish who sees others climb onto dry land, recalls smaller percentage occurrences of such during its youth, and recognizes a pattern, while being unable itself to breathe air.

The virtues or sins of this metaconscious organism, or any of its component parts, related to or subsequent to its speciation away from standalone humans, are irrelevant for the purposes of discussing the process of evolution. Posit Mexifornia's oneday C.E.O. Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky, a metaphorical neuron collective of this new organism, versus retired U.N. Army soldier, active drywall repair expert, and avid L.A. Lagos fan Joseph Plumber, III, a metaphorical immunological component. They will both do things that will befuddle and upset older-fashioned organisms. Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky, for example, may require Joseph Plumber, III, to perform twenty hours of weekly community service patching holes in the walls of the nearby Razachurch's megapews. Chad Miles, non-rallying non-voter with a collection of vintage VHS tapes in his garage-bedroom, may be upset by Clinton Mezvinsky's administration, and may falsify his own community service records an hour or two a week; and, he may be even more upset by Joseph Plumber, III's baffling interest in Los Lagos de L.A. games and in purchasing Los Lagos de L.A. products.

To Chad Miles, outdated standalone human, he seems to be living in a dystopia, and like the proverbial Winston Smith in 1984, Chad Miles can't understand why Joseph Plumber, III doesn't want to break away from the bland horror; indeed, why everyone else seems to enjoy participating in the process. Much human fiction over the past century has dealt not on standalone or national heroics and/or acts of grace, as once was, but on the metaconscious dystopia, as portrayed by more-standalone entities who perceive their pending extinction. Truly, these dystopias may seem bad or horrible, but in fact, the L.A. Lagos merchandise and Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky's labor-tithes form a highly integrated, efficient system of communication, whereby the subtle arrangements of obligation, deference, efficiently vicarious competition, and frugal reward, help govern the behavior of Joseph Plumber, III, keeping him operating within certain parameters with a minimum of directly applied force. His gleefully subservient existence, like that of Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky, permits the mass mind to carry out its growth, development, self-image, and other functions, with reduced dissent among its component parts. "Bread and circuses" carries a pejorative taint, similar to "cheating" and "deceiving" and "slave," but these distinctions, so important to standalones, are healthy and necessary for the metaconscious development we see now. And Mexico's going to pay for it.

Un-fetaling in Response to Material Irrelevancy

The confusion, frustration, and perhaps denialism of the nineteenth century farmer, with his horse and cart, at seeing a 2017 Ford drive past him, would be perhaps similar to how standalones feel today, when contemplating their comparative material irrelevancy.
The difference between metaphor and reality in this case is that standalones are not 1899 farmers, but 2017 farmers who simply haven't visited the right parts of the city yet, or who have in some other way managed to avoid recognition or acknowledgement of the continuing development of the automobile. In a way, what many of us have done over the past few centuries is presume that individuals and groups of individuals have stopped evolving, and that technology remains the same as it always was--ergo the incessant complaints of outsiders that something is "wrong" in London, Brussels, Columbia, and so forth.

People are perpetually encouraged to believe they are "taking things back" or "cleaning out" places that they supposedly designed and created themselves. To mass-humans, this helps ease the mental transition, since they have no desire (if they can even be said to still have desires as standalones would have once defined "desires") to "make things the old way again." For standalones, though, the desire to "fix this mess" by getting rid of metaconsciousness is as doomed as the hypothetical farmer's attempt to outlaw non-horse transportation. Those god-damned machines are so loud and filthy, so unnaturally swift, where you can't wave or talk to or acknowledge anyone. Little does the hypothetical farmer know that the people in the cars are browsing the internet, watching movies, and videoconferencing, being less and more connected than ever before.

In 1916, most Europeans would view 2016 Europe's politicians as impossibly evil entities; the transition from 2016 to 2116 should be even more shocking, even to those now prepared to accept mandatory transrhinoceros transadult prostitution. We must not let our outdated disgust at what future Canamerican C.E.O. Theodore J. Kushner's administration will require of the remaining standalone humans in eastern America's territory to blind us to the realities of the evolution that is occurring. Perhaps this is our moment to mourn; perhaps to share physically-unrecordable kinship with our previously exterminated and forgotten predecessors. In any case, we must put those things aside and focus on the observable development of metaconscious life, not the appurtenant moralities thereto, lest we fail to perceive the metaconsciousness, and outdatedly-blame what we incorrectly conclude to be conspiracies of standalones.

"Sociology," like "political science," "Newtonian physics," or other recent minutiae, is the pretense that the newborn mass mind(s) do not exist, and that their doings are merely random phenomena based on tautological axioms ascribed to an unknowable god-standard. If we fancy ourselves among the last standalones, let us hope we do not react with too much shock to the notion that our own preferred tools, which have served us so well in some ways, are neither foundational nor complete. Let us become able to fathom that it is no longer appropriate to adjudge the doings of our world based on the assumption that everyone else is engaged in, or still capable of, standalone operation.

...

We'll turn next to the unstable nature of the local Oversoul, and some of the ways in which it will fail.